Process counts....

Megan McArdle points out how much damage the effort of forcing a vote on health care did to the actual process of legislation. Her two biggest beefs are writing the bill to fit budget guidelines - this is done as thought trying to solve a puzzle game, with no consideration of what the bill will do to the actual budgets of the future. The other is an attempt to legislate what can be legislated - actually putting a clause into the bill that attempts to make it impossible (or at least difficult) to ever alter the bill in the future.